4,331 entries categorized "Terrorism / Counterterrorism"

May 18, 2016

Al Jazeera reports one of the 219 schoolgirls abducted in Chibok in northeast Nigeria has been found, the first breakthrough since their seizure by Boko Haram more than two years ago, according to the army and activists. Tsambido Hosea Abana, a Chibok community leader in Abuja from the BringBackOurGirls pressure group, said on Twitter on Wednesday that the girl was found by civilian vigilantes in the Sambisa Forest area of Borno state the previous day. Yakubu Nkeki, head of the Abducted Chibok Girls Parents' group, and Ayuba Alamson Chibok, a community leader in the town, also gave the same account to AFP news agency.

May 17, 2016

Al Jazeera reports three bombings in Baghdad have killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 100, police and medical sources say, continuing a deadly spate of attacks in the Iraqi capital. A suicide bombing on Tuesday in a marketplace in the northern, mainly Shia district of al-Shaab killed 38 people and wounded over 70, while a car bomb in the nearby Sadr City left at least 19 more dead and 17 wounded. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed responsibility of the al-Shaab attack, which it said was carried out by a man identified as Abu Khattab al-Iraqi.

BBC News reports world powers have agreed to try to turn the crumbling partial truce in Syria into a more comprehensive ceasefire. The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) warned that the unravelling of the 11-week cessation of hostilities could lead to a return to all-out war. Those persistently breaching the truce could be excluded from it. The ISSG also said that from June the UN would begin air drops of aid for all areas in need if ground access to besieged areas continued to be denied. Diplomats want to encourage the opposition to resume indirect negotiations on a political settlement to end the five-year conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people.

The Washington Post reports the top U.S. general overseeing American military operations in Africa said Tuesday that while Washington is considering sending weapons to Libya to fight the Islamic State, doing so will require taking cues from a fledgling unity government that is still struggling to establish support at home. Army Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, told a handful of reporters here that Libya’s internal politics still make it difficult to determine which armed groups are aligning themselves with the Government of National Accord, an interim group that has backing from the United Nations. The militias would be called on to play a key role in stopping the spread of the Islamic State, which took hold in Libya in November 2014.

May 16, 2016

The Washington Post reports diplomats from 25 countries and international organizations, including the United States, said Monday they are considering arming and training the new unity government in Libya so it can fight the spread of terrorist groups in the country and counter the smuggling of migrants to Europe. In a joint communique following a lengthy meeting on ways to rein in chaos in Libya, the diplomats said they would support Libya’s request to be exempted from a United Nations embargo that was put in place five years ago to keep arms out of the hands of Islamist militants and rival militias locked in a power struggle.

Reuters reports Islamic State efforts to exploit chaos may have brought Saudi-backed forces and Iran-allied Houthis tentatively closer at peace talks in Yemen's civil war, but a deal seems unlikely in time to avert collapse into armed, feuding statelets. Ferocious conflict along Yemen's northern border between Saudi Arabia and Iran-allied Ansurallah, a Shi'ite Muslim revival movement also called the Houthis, defied two previous attempts to seal a peace. But a truce this year and prisoner exchanges mean hopes for a third round of talks are higher. The threat from an emerging common enemy may be galvanizing their efforts. Islamic State appears to be behind a dizzying uptick in suicide attacks and al-Qaeda fighters continue to hold sway over broad swathes of the country that abuts Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter.

May 12, 2016

The New York Times reports the Kenyan government has announced that it plans to expel hundreds of thousands of refugees, a move that aid agencies say would violate international law and endanger many people. For years, Kenya has threatened to shut down the Dadaab refugee camp, where hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been marooned for decades. A sea of tents and plastic shelters spread out across miles of desert near the border with Somalia, the camp has become essentially one of Kenya’s largest cities. On Wednesday, the Kenyan government said that terrorists were using Dadaab as a hide-out.

The New York Times reports the Islamic State calls them “inghimasi” — zealous foot soldiers who intend to fight to their deaths. And as the American-backed coalition has reclaimed territory from the group in Iraq and Syria, that fervor has kept prisoners from being much of a problem: The shooting only stops when almost every Islamic State fighter has been killed. But that could change as the coalition moves toward the Islamic State’s largest urban strongholds — Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria — raising a potential problem for the United States. If the coalition is successful and thousands of ordinary members of a collapsing Islamic State have nowhere left to retreat, will they start to surrender in greater numbers? And if so, who will be responsible for imprisoning them?

May 10, 2016

Reuters reports the Islamic State said on Tuesday it had downed a Syrian army helicopter in a desert area of central Syria where heavy fighting is going on, the militant group and a monitor said. Amaq, a news agency associated with Islamic State, said the helicopter was shot down near in the Palmyra desert between Homs and Palmyra city. The Syrian army has not commented on the report but had earlier said its war planes pounded Islamic State defenses in the area and hit their convoys in the vicinity of the Shaer gas field, north of Huweisis, which the militants took over last Thursday.

May 09, 2016

Reuters reports Iraqi forces retook a northern village from Islamic State on Monday, supported by artillery and air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, as they try to close in on the city of Mosul. In March, Iraq's military opened a new front against the militants in the Makhmour area, which it called the first phase of a wider campaign to liberate Mosul, around 60 km (40 miles) further north. But progress has been slow, and to date Iraqi forces have taken just five villages. "In a swift operation, our units took the groups of the terrorist organization Daesh by surprise and entered the village," read a statement from the Nineveh Operations Command, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The New York Times reports as the military and political battle against the Islamic State escalates, Muslim imams and scholars in the West are fighting on another front — through theology. Imam Suhaib Webb, a Muslim leader in Washington, has held live monthly video chats to refute the religious claims of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a dig at the extremists, he broadcast from ice cream parlors and called his talks “ISIS and ice cream.” Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, an American Muslim scholar based in Berkeley, Calif., has pleaded with Muslims not to be deceived by the “stupid young boys” of the Islamic State.

Al Jazeera reports the Turkish government has made the unusual move of confirming that its special forces entered Syria on Saturday, on what it called a "reconnaissance mission." Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep near the Turkish-Syrian border, said it was highly unusual for the Turkish government to announce a special forces operation conducted outside the country's borders. "Perhaps they were trying to give a message by announcing something so secretive," she said. She said the operation was probably an attempt to stop the almost daily attacks on Kilis, a Turkish border province which has been hit by rockets from areas in Syria controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

May 04, 2016

The Associated Press reports an international coalition leading the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq agreed Wednesday to accelerate their contributions but did not publicly specify what those would be. The group also called on Iraqi leaders to reconcile political differences. A day after a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in small arms fire with IS forces, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that as the war intensifies, "these risks will continue."

May 03, 2016

The Associated Press reports an American serviceman was killed in Iraq by fire from the Islamic State group during an attack on Iraqi Kurdish positions outside the IS-held city of Mosul on Tuesday morning. It was the third death of a U.S. service member in Iraq since the U.S.-led coalition launched its campaign against IS militants in the summer of 2014. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter first announced the death, speaking to reporters in Stuttgart, Germany, where he has been consulting with European allies this week on fighting the Islamic State group. Carter described it as a "combat death" but provided no immediate details.

May 02, 2016

The New York Times reports hundreds of protesters stormed Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone on Saturday and entered the Parliament building, demanding an end to corruption. A day later, they began to leave. What brought on this chaos, and why did it end so quickly? Images of Iraqis storming Parliament over the weekend made it seem as though a popular revolution were at hand. In reality, it was something else: partly a legitimate expression of popular anger, but partly political theater. The episode had to be somewhat condoned by the authorities, given the ease with which the protesters were able to pass through the fortresslike security.

Reuters reports Saudi Arabia has warned the United States that a proposed U.S. law that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks would erode global investor confidence in America, its foreign minister said on Monday. The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, speaking to reporters in Geneva after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which mainly focused on Syria, denied that Saudi Arabia had "threatened" to withdraw investment from its close ally. The New York Times reported last month that the Riyadh government had threatened to sell up to $750 billion worth of American assets should the U.S. Congress pass a bill that would take away immunity from foreign governments in cases arising from a "terrorist attack that kills an American on American soil".

April 28, 2016

Reuters reports Islamic State earns millions of dollars a month running car dealerships and fish farms in Iraq, making up for lower oil income after its battlefield losses, Iraqi judicial authorities said on Thursday. Security experts once estimated the ultra-radical Islamist group's annual income at $2.9 billion, much of it coming from oil and gas installations in Iraq and Syria. The U.S.-led coalition has targeted Islamic State's financial infrastructure, using air strikes to reduce its ability to extract, refine and transport oil and so forcing fighters to reportedly take significant pay cuts.

The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Wednesday it wouldn't consider telling Apple Inc. how the agency was able to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone. The decision brings to an abrupt end an internal government debate about how much to tell Apple about a newly discovered security vulnerability in one iPhone model. The FBI decision not to initiate a broad governmental discussion called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process—in which a number of agencies explore whether to disclose software vulnerabilities to the affected companies—means Apple will likely be kept in the dark about exactly how the government was able to crack the model 5c iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in December.

The Washington Post reports Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old French national of Moroccan origin suspected of involvement in November's terrorist attacks in Paris, was transferred to French custody by Belgian authorities Wednesday. According to French officials, he'll be placed in solitary confinement in a maximum-security facility as investigative judges determine his eventual charges. In an interview with the French daily Liberation, Sven Mary, Abdeslam's Belgian attorney, heaped opprobrium on his departing client, whom Mary described as having "the intelligence of an empty ashtray — an abysmal emptiness." Mary referred to Abdeslam in French as a "petit con" — a phrase that could be translated as "little jerk" or a--hole — who was "more a follower than a leader" among "Molenbeek’s little delinquents."

Reuters reports the Turkish military returned fire on Islamic State positions in northern Syria on Thursday, killing 11 members of the militant group, military sources said. The military returned fire after its artillery near the border town of Karkamis was hit by mortars, the sources said. Meanwhile, brawls between lawmakers from Turkey's ruling AK Party and the pro-Kurdish opposition have delayed efforts to pass legislation on a migration deal with the European Union, but the country's EU minister said a deadline next week would still be met.

April 27, 2016

Reuters reports Iraqis armed forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air power captured a village in Nineveh province from Islamic State on Wednesday, the first advance on the northern front since the offensive was paused three weeks ago. Mahana, sitting south of a main east-west road, became just the fourth village seized by the army in the Makhmour area, which is set to be a staging ground for a future assault on Mosul, about 60 km (40 miles) further north. The advance brings Iraqi forces slightly closer to the oil town of Qayyara on the western banks of the Tigris River, control over which would help to isolate Mosul, the largest city held by the militants, from territory they control further south and east.

The Wall Street Journal reports the Pentagon is being careful not to reveal the precise ways it is targeting Islamic State through the use of expanded cyber weaponry, concerned that any clues could help the terror network avoid future attacks. Adm. Mike Rogers, head of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, said Tuesday that the Pentagon’s use of computer tactics to confront Islamic State is part of its broader campaign to defeat the group. Speaking at Georgetown University, however, he wouldn’t say what those tactics are or what the impact has been. In February, the White House and Pentagon began speaking more openly about the government’s use of cyberweapons to confront Islamic State, saying it was meant to complement military strikes that have killed a number of the terror network’s senior officials in recent months.

BBC News reports Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has appeared before a French judge hours after his extradition from Belgium. His lawyer said the 26-year-old French national had been placed under formal investigation for murder and attempted murder of a terrorist nature. Salah Abdeslam is thought to have played a key role in planning the Paris attacks and transporting the attackers. He was arrested in an March 18th raid in Brussels after four months on the run. The co-ordinated attacks carried out by so-called Islamic State in Paris on November 13th claimed 130 lives and left dozens more severely wounded.

The Washington Post reports barely two months after the United States and Russia joined together to forge a partial cease-fire in Syria, cooperation between them, including on a long-term political solution to that country’s civil war, is rapidly eroding. Russia this week accused the administration of “appeasing” its regional partners by ignoring the presence of terrorists among opposition forces it backs in the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Noting President Obama’s decision to send an additional 250 Special Operations forces to the separate war against the Islamic State in Syria, despite pledges of no U.S. “boots on the ground,” a foreign ministry spokesman asked sarcastically whether they were deploying barefoot.

April 26, 2016

The New York Times reports the Islamic State is operating clandestine terrorist cells in Britain, Germany and Italy, similar to the groups that carried out the attacks in Paris and Brussels, the top-ranking American intelligence official said on Monday. When asked if the Islamic State was engaging in secret activities in those nations, the official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said: “Yes, they do. That is a concern, obviously, of ours and our European allies.” He then added, “We continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIL in the countries you named.” ISIL is another name for the Islamic State.

The Associated Press reports the Bangladeshi branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility Tuesday for the killing of a gay rights activist and his friend, undermining the prime minister's insistence just hours earlier that her political opponents were to blame for the attack and for a rising tide of violence against secular activists and writers. The claim by Ansar-al-islam - which said it targeted the two men on Monday night because they were "pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality" - raised doubts about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's repeated assurances that authorities have the security situation under control.

BBC News reports Swedish intelligence service Sapo is investigating a possible terror threat to the capital, Stockholm, local media say. Iraqi authorities had informed Sweden that seven or eight militants from the so-called Islamic State group had traveled to Sweden, newspapers reported. A Sapo spokesman would not confirm the nature of the information received. But he told Swedish Radio the information could not be "dismissed." The same spokesman, Simon Bynert, told another news outlet that Sapo was also sharing information with the national police service "to see if they in turn can implement measures that fall under their remit."

The Washington Post reports the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria has dropped from roughly 2,000 a month down to 200 within the past year, according to the Pentagon, which says the waning numbers are further proof of the Islamic State’s declining stature. The declining number of fighters is a direct result of strikes that have targeted the terror group’s infrastructure, Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter E. Gersten, the deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State, said Tuesday.

Reuters reports a suspected U.S. drone strike killed a local leader in Al Qaeda and five of his aides in southern Yemen on Tuesday, residents said, as Yemeni and Emirati troops pressed their offensive against the militant group. Abu Sameh al-Zinjibari and other men died when a missile struck their moving car in Amoudiya, a village near the Qaeda-controlled towns of Jaar and Zinjibar. Government and Emirati forces based in the port city of Aden, about 25 miles away, have been mounting a ground push against towns held by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) along a vast stretch of Yemen's coast.

April 25, 2016

The New York Times reports after courting Pakistan for more than a year, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan changed course on Monday and warned that he would lodge a complaint with the United Nations Security Council if Pakistan refuses to take military action against Taliban leaders operating from its soil to wage an increasingly deadly insurgency across Afghanistan. Ghani has taken pains to persuade Pakistan’s leadership, particularly its powerful military, to bring the insurgent leaders to the negotiating table. But an increase in Taliban violence, including a brutal attack last week in the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul, that left at least 64 people killed and more than 300 wounded, has forced Ghani to effectively end what has been a cornerstone effort of his troubled presidency.

BBC News reports the Yemeni port city of Mukalla, controlled by al-Qaeda militants for a year, has been recaptured by Yemeni and Saudi-led coalition forces. The coalition says 800 militants were killed in the first hours of a joint operation across the south of Yemen. But Mukalla residents said there had been little fighting in the city, with the militants apparently withdrawing. Al-Qaeda's local offshoot has taken advantage of Yemen's civil war to seize territory, weapons and money. Over the past 13 months, pro-government and coalition forces have focused on battling Houthi rebels and military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Washington Post reports President Obama outlined plans Monday to bolster U.S. Special Operations forces in Syria, raising their number to as many as 300 troops in a move he said was needed to keep pressure on the Islamic State. The president noted gains made by the current 50 special operators in missions to advise and assist local forces batting the Islamic State, which holds territory in Syria and Iraq. “Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel . . . to keep up this momentum,” Obama said in a speech that also focused broadly on European issues.

The New York Times reports Iraqi forces, backed by American airstrikes and advised by American officers, have been making strides in Anbar Province, slowly taking back territory from the Islamic State. But in Fallujah, a city in Sunni-dominated Anbar that has been in the hands of the Islamic State longer than any other in Iraq or Syria, civilians are starving as the Iraqi Army and militias lay siege to the city. And elsewhere in the province, Shiite militias supported by Iran are carrying out kidnappings and murders and restricting the movement of Sunni Arab civilians, according to American and Iraqi officials.

April 22, 2016

The Associated Press reports the U.N. envoy for Syria says the current round of Geneva peace talks will continue until "probably Wednesday, as originally planned," but that the two sides are "extremely polarized" and a cease-fire is in trouble. Staffan de Mistura says the hobbled peace process needs support from a group of countries known as the International Syria Support Group led by the U.S. and Russia, and calls on that body to reconvene at ministerial level. The opposition High Negotiations Committee pulled out of formal, though not "technical" talks, earlier this week, as it accused President Bashar Assad's government of violating the cease-fire and hampering the flow of aid to besieged areas.

The Washington Post reports the U.S. military on Friday acknowledged killing 20 civilians and wounding 11 more in recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, more than doubling the number of civilian fatalities it has admitted causing in the military campaign against the Islamic State. The nine errant airstrikes occurred between Sept. 10 and Feb. 2, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. Six of the strikes occurred in Iraq, and three occurred in Syria, U.S. military officials said. “We deeply regret the unintentional loss of life and injuries resulting from those strikes and express our deepest sympathies to the victims’ families and those affected,” the military’s statement said.

Reuters reports U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday there were no plans to deploy ground troops in Libya, but that the United States would not wait to see if Islamic State starts to gain a foothold there. Speaking in London, Obama said it would be a challenge to support Libya's nascent government. Libya's new U.N.-backed government has begun trying to bring a chaotic country under its control after years of fighting among rival units of former rebels who vied for power after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

The New York Times reports Najim Laachraoui, one of the two suicide bombers who attacked Brussels Airport last month, has been identified by former Islamic State hostages as one of their captors in Syria, a lawyer for several of the hostages said on Friday. Marie-Laure Ingouf, a lawyer for Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres, two of the four French journalists who were first detained in 2013 by the Islamic State in Syria, said that the former hostages had identified one of their captors as Mr. Laachraoui, who used the name Abu Idris at the time. In the latest issue of the Islamic State’s online magazine Dabiq, Laachraoui was identified by the nom de guerre Abu Idris al-Baljiki.

April 21, 2016

The New York Times reports President Obama joined the leaders of six Persian Gulf nations on Thursday for a summit meeting intended to reassure allies in the region that the United States is committed to their security. In a series of closed-door sessions, Mr. Obama and his counterparts were expected to discuss ways to promote regional security, efforts to defeat terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, and how best to deal with Iran. Before the trip, American officials said they hoped the summit meeting would build on discussions with top Persian Gulf officials that took place when Mr. Obama hosted a similar group at Camp David a year ago.

BBC News reports militants from so-called Islamic State (IS) have been pushed out of the key eastern city of Derna, a rival Islamist group has said. IS "have all left Derna - they have no presence here anymore", Hafeth al-Dabaa, a spokesman for Derna Mujahideen Shura Council (DMSC), told the BBC. The al-Qaeda linked DMSC is an umbrella group for local militias. Derna has seen a three-way conflict between IS, DMSC and forces loyal to Libya's eastern government. Since 2014, Libya has had two competing governments - one in the capital Tripoli, and another in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Reuters reports the Russian military said on Thursday it had completed the demining of the ancient part of the Syrian city of Palmyra, recaptured by Syrian and Russian forces in late March from militants. "Comrade commander-in-chief! As of today, the task of demining the architectural and historical part of Palmyra has been fully completed," Russian engineer troops commander Yuri Stavitski told President Vladimir Putin via video link from Palmyra. He said Russian troops would continue demining Palmyra's residential area.

The New York Time reports Iran reacted furiously on Thursday to a United States Supreme Court ruling that Iran’s central bank must pay nearly $2 billion to American victims of terrorist attacks, calling the ruling thievery and a new threat to any improvement in relations. A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said in a statement quoted by state media that the court’s ruling on Wednesday was a mockery of international law and “amounts to appropriation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s property.”

April 20, 2016

The Washington Post reports a public advocate appointed by the nation’s secretive surveillance court last year argued that a little-known provision of the PRISM program, which enables the FBI to query foreign intelligence information for evidence of domestic crime, violated the Constitution. But the court disagreed with her. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asked Amy Jeffress, the advocate, in August to assess the provision, according to a court opinion filed in November but released by the intelligence community only on Tuesday

Reuters reports military forces in eastern Libya said Islamic State fighters had retreated from long-held positions around the city of Derna on Wednesday, and were engaged in clashes with troops to the south. Security forces allied to Libya's eastern government have carried out occasional strikes against Islamic State in the area over recent months. The militant group lost control of the port city in June last year by rival Islamists. Islamic State has gained ground in Libya as two rival governments and a range of armed factions battled to control the country in the last two years. But it has also faced resistance from other local armed groups on the ground.

The New York Times reports the French government will seek a two-month extension of the state of emergency it declared after the attacks in and around Paris that left 130 people dead in November, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Wednesday. The move, which is expected to get the required parliamentary approval, comes as France prepares for the European Championship soccer tournament and the Tour de France this summer. The two high-profile, well-attended events will pose a serious security challenge as the government tries to guarantee safety amid the increasing threat posed by Islamist extremists.

April 18, 2016

The New York Times reports President Obama will send American military advisers closer to the front lines of the conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq, part of a series of measures that will broaden the United States military campaign against the extremist group there. The advisers, who until now had been assisting Iraqi military divisions, which have about 10,000 troops, will now also work with units of about 2,000 soldiers who are more directly involved in day-to-day combat, Defense Department officials said Monday.

April 13, 2016

The Associated Press reports Spanish police have arrested a Frenchman suspected of supplying weapons to Paris attacker Amedy Coulibaly for use in the deadly January 2015 attacks in the French capital, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. A ministry statement said Antoine Denive, 27, from the northern French town of Sainte Catherine was arrested Tuesday with two other men in the southern Spanish beach town of Rincon de la Victoria on a European arrest warrant. A Serbian man and a Montenegrin man also allegedly tied to arms trafficking were also arrested.

The Washington Post reports the FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter. The new information was then used to create a piece of hardware that helped the FBI to crack the iPhone’s four-digit personal identification number without triggering a security feature that would have erased all the data, the individuals said. The researchers, who typically keep a low profile, specialize in hunting for vulnerabilities in software and then in some cases selling them to the U.S. government.

The New York Times reports American airstrikes have killed 25,000 Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria and incinerated millions of dollars plundered by the militants, according to Pentagon officials. Iraqi and Kurdish forces have taken back 40 percent of the militant group’s land in Iraq, the officials say, and forces backed by the West have seized a sizable amount of territory in Syria that had been controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But the battlefield successes enjoyed by Western-backed forces in the Islamic State’s heartland have done little to stop the expansion of the militants to Europe, North Africa and Afghanistan.

April 12, 2016

Al Jazeera reports Boko Haram child "suicide bombings" have surged elevenfold in West Africa in the past year, with children as young as eight, mostly girls, detonating bombs in schools and markets, a leading charity has said. One in every five "suicide bombers" used by Boko Haram in the past two years has been a child, a report released on Tuesday by the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, said. Suicide bombings have spread beyond Nigeria's borders, with an increasing number of deadly attacks carried out by children with explosives hidden under their clothes or in baskets.

BBC News reports two more men have been charged over the March 22 Brussels attacks, after they were linked to a safe house said to have been used by one of the bombers. Smail F and Ibrahim F, reported in local media to be brothers, face charges including terrorist murder. Three suicide bombers killed 32 people at Brussels international airport and Maelbeek metro station. On Tuesday, three more suspects in the attacks in Paris in November were arrested in Brussels, officials said.